October 12, 2010

Organizations across the world over are either planning or have already rolled out Internet Explorer 8 for use as an Internet Browser. If the company is also having an SAP System as an ERP solution for the business than it may be worth while to check the compatibility between IE8 and SAP ERP Applications. This is important because SAP Applications e.g. SRM, APO, SAP ERP, Enterprise Portal uses the Internet Browser to perform certain business transactions. The blog explores options to analyse and how to achieve compatibility between SAP Aplications and IE8.

Recently I had the chance to come across a case wherein a business user tried to connect to SAP Portal Application in his company from an internet cafe. He could not access the SAP Portal Application from Internet cafe while from his official computer he could access without any problem. The analysis revealed that Internet Explorer version is different in both the cases. The IE version in Internet cafe was IE8 whereas in the official laptop it was a lower version. On further analysis it turned out that IE8 is not compatible with SAP Application version that was being accessed. The result was Enhancement Pack upgrade project for the SAP Application. Thereafter, SAP Application was compatible with IE8. Since IE8 is one of the latest offering from Microsoft and companies have plans to roll this out all across organization.

The SAP support organizations within the company should make a compatibility check between various SAP Applications and the Internet browser being used wthin the company. This check should be made part of the support process to be checked periodically to avoid any surprises.

October 8, 2010

In the part-1 blog, the main topics in a business transformation were covered at high level.In current Part-2 blog, the global process will be discussed.A global process-oriented approach requires generally accepted (standardized) and comparable descriptions of work processes. Therefore, the key purpose of global SAP Roles is to have a uniform basis with global principles.

A global SAP Role is defined from a set of related tasks, which result in specific output. It is an explanation of how a business process is performed. A global SAP Role can be applied to several jobs and several employees can have the same role.A global SAP role is the basis for further activities:  Explaining how employees jobs will change in relation to new responsibilities and way of working Performance measurement Training requirements Assignment of system authorizationThe SAP role definition takes place through the following steps:• Definition of all relevant roles in scope for SAP XXX Project.• Mapping of SAP Business, management and reporting tasks to the according SAP Role • Detailed description of SAP Roles in a uniform template. The description of role is divided into two parts:Part I: Global DescriptionPart II: Detailed Information for Local ImplementationTo build a security framework, the following design objectives shall be reviewed with the security team, business process owners, and role owners.